Day 24, Romans 5-10(5/1/10)
Most of Paul’s letters were written to churches that he had established or to people that he knew.
These people knew him well, and if they didn’t have a good grasp of theology, his tendency was to yell at
them (e.g., “Are you people of Galatia crazy?! – Gal. 3:3; “Do you want me to come back there with a stick?” – 1 Cor. 4:21). In addition to theology and counsel, these letters contain incomplete sentences, incomplete thoughts, cajolery, threats, congratulations, and exasperation. They often have whole sections that are answers to questions that were sent to Paul; since we don’t have the questions, we have to figure them out as best we can from context.

Romans, however, is written to the church at Rome, which Paul had never visited.
He was planning to go there to see them, which was in itself unusual, because he
prided himself on always taking the Gospel to places that had never heard it before.
There is no yelling in the book of Romans. Instead, Paul carefully and systematically lays out his theology by way of introducing himself.

Day 25, Romans 11 – 1 Corinthians 1(5/2/10)
Yesterday I gave you some idea about the differences that you will see in Paul’s letters, so now I want to say a few things about “attribution.” (This is just my opinion, so you don’t have to pay attention to it.) Biblical scholars have expended a great deal of thought and ink over the centuries on this topic, which means “deciding who wrote a particular work.” They study each verse with a microscope. They study word usage, sentence structure, quality of Greek, internal clues about dates, and a bunch of other factors. Then they write papers concluding that Paul didn’t write Book X, or John didn’t write Book Y.

Before you get too excited about this kind of stuff, here are two questions you should ask yourself:

“If I wrote letters to my Congressman in 1990, to my oldest friend in 2001, and to my kid at college who just reported failing English 101 in 2008, would all these letters have the same word usage, sentence structure, quality of English, and internal clues about dates?” (Probably not.)

“Since the Church has recognized all these letters as scripture for 2000 years, does who wrote a specific letter make any difference to the story of salvation?” (No.)

Furthermore, sometimes the attribution scholars conclude things that seem to me to be just plain silly. I wrote my first paper for publication in 1970. I published an abstract this year. For 38 years, I have been writing papers and editing other folk’s papers for publication, singly and in collaboration with many other authors. I assure you that sometimes it’s very easy to tell that the same person wrote two works, and sometimes it’s impossible.

We actually have no more information now about who wrote each letter than the early Church leaders did when they made the original attributions. If I change the attribution without new information, it must mean that I think I’m smarter than, say John Chrysostom or Jerome or whoever made the attribution in the first place. I do admit to thinking I’m pretty smart, but I don’t think I’m smarter than those giants. Apparently a lot of scholars think they are.

For all these reasons, I take the conservative view that Church tradition is correct in saying that Paul wrote or dictated all the letters attributed to Paul, John wrote or dictated the letters attributed to John, and so on. If you choose not to believe that, I’m not going to get too excited about it.

Don’t get me wrong – I read Biblical commentaries for fun and for edification. Scholarship is important. It’s just that so far I’ve never seen a case wherein the disputed authorship of a book or letter made any difference whatsoever to the story of salvation, and I am a lot more concerned about your salvation and mine than I am about who wrote the book of Ephesians.

Day 26, I Corinthians 2-9(5/5/10)
Are you keeping up with the scripture listening? I’m not. I’m having trouble putting away my old, time-wasting habits and developing a new, productive habit. When I can, though, I listen for longer than 28 minutes. I’m really enjoying the dramatization of the New International Version – it’s like reading a new translation. I’m looking forward to the day when I get an MP3-compatible player in my car (probably about 10 years from now, when the world has moved on to NQ4), which is where I play most of my music. Maybe I should hijack my husband’s iPod (a Christmas present that neither of us have learned how to use yet). Don’t worry if you have fallen behind. Make a new start and pick up where we are now. Skip the study tips and spend the time listening.

The city of Corinth was a pit of sin and depravity. It was an important and prosperous port, located on a narrow isthmus over which ships were hauled by hand to avoid going around the southern part of Greece by sea. The port was full of wealthy residents seeking the latest forms of dissipation and drunken and violent sailors looking for easy women. The sailors did not have to look far, because more than 1000 temple prostitutes served at the temple of Aphrodite. (Never be fooled into thinking that Aphrodite/Venus was a love goddess. This idol was a sex goddess.) In its own day, Corinth had a reputation for wealth and for drunken, immoral debauchery.

In this setting, the little church full of Gentile converts had a tough time putting away their old, pagan habits and developing new habits of holiness. Paul first spent a year and a half there around 51 or 52 AD (Acts 18) and later may have spent another three months with them (Acts 20:2-3, 2 Cor. 1:15). In spite of Paul’s instruction and example, the converts bickered about church politics, argued over who was the most important person in the church, ignored open sin, and presented a bad example to the unbelievers. (Does any of this sound familiar?) Naturally, they did not write to Paul about these things, but he found out anyway. Chapters 1 to 6 of I Corinthians are devoted to Paul’s response to what he had been told.

Day 27, I Corinthians 10-15(5/6/10)
One of the really great things about the Epistles is that they show us problems that earlier churches have had. Maybe – just maybe – we can learn from their problems and avoid them in our own churches.

The church at Corinth had some questions (actually, knowing the Corinthians, they probably had some arguments). They wrote to Paul (I Cor. 7:1), ostensibly to ask for guidance, but probably because each person in the church thought Paul would agree with his or her position. (Does any of this sound familiar?) Chapters 7-14 of I Corinthians are devoted to answering these questions.

There are two important points about these chapters. First, we don’t know what the questions were. We need to figure out the questions as best we can in order to understand the answers – for example, if I answer, “Four dollars,” it’s important to know whether the question was “What’s the price of gas?” or “How much is your pension?” We don’t know for sure what the questions were, but we try to figure them out from context.

Second, the answers were written specifically to the church at Corinth, which had specific problems. We need to be a little careful in deciding how to apply these scriptures to our church and our problems. It would be an error, for example, not to serve meat at Wednesday Night Live for fear someone would be offended. On the other hand, it would be a worse error to decide that since there are no idols in meat-packing plants, the scripture doesn’t apply to us at all.

So with those two warnings in mind, here’s a guess at what the questions were.

Ch. 7. Is it okay to get married or not? Because a person who gets married is probably going to have a sexual relationship, and we know that sex is potentially a sin.

Ch. 8. Is it okay to eat meat or not? Because some of us say meat is just meat, and others think eating meat is worshipping idols.

Ch. 9. Some people have told us that you only preached to us to try to get our money. Is that true?

Ch. 10 seems to be related to the question in Ch. 8. I can’t really tell whether he is revisiting that topic with some more thoughts on it, or whether Ch. 9 is actually related to the same question in some way. When Paul is writing to people he knows well, his thoughts tend to skip around some.

Ch. 11. Could you give us some guidance on worship services?

Ch. 12-13. Which is the best and most important gift? Because Joe says it’s tongues, and Susie says it’s healing, and
Sam says it’s teaching. (The short answer is that all gifts are important, everyone has a gift, and it’s important for you to use your gift, because no one else can. Nevertheless, love is even more important than gifts.)

Ch. 14. Isn’t it true that a real Christian speaks in tongues?

After answering these questions, Paul reviews the Gospel (Ch. 15). In Ch. 16, he appeals to the Corinthians to take an offering for mission work, and he takes care of some business items.

Opinions expressed on this page are solely those of the
author, Regina Hunter, and may or may not be shared by the sponsors or the
Bible-study participants. Thanks to the
Holy Spirit for any useful ideas presented here, and thanks to all the readers
for their support and enthusiasm. All
errors are, of course, the sole responsibility of the author.

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